BladeFederation

You’re absolutely right about sycophantic Ai, and that brings up a really good point about society. Can I help you with an essay that lists the reasons Ai is harmful?

The fact that it exists might, even if uncommon. It was already in question for many developers due to the bad press and minimal effect on sales.

That being said, as someone who works in IT, please don’t use a hypervisor to run pirated software if you have absolutely anything important or of note on your computer. You shouldn’t even run your an admin account as your daily driver on Windows. MAYBE if you have a separate computer just for gaming and disconnect it from the internet. Maybe. There are other things to play or pirate though.

I’m not Muslim, though I do have some general knowledge of their teachings. I don’t think that this is a topic that can be answered only with scripture, since it was not directly addressed. You pretty much covered the two schools of thought in the topic.

But consider this: Jesus (considered by most Muslims to be a prophet) says in Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

You see, based on the above, my perspective is that if you are using (any) scripture to justify an action, you’re probably doing religion wrong. Personally, I agree with the Muslim idea that knowledge should not be hidden, I think it’s an important addendum to simply “not lying”. I don’t believe in intellectual property as a concept. But…someone or many someones did work for many hours on the end product.

Is paywalling, say, GTA V “hiding knowledge”? I believe in game preservation and all that, but ultimately, no, that’s a little silly to say. It’s a luxury. An extra thing we do for entertainment, not to better oneself. Is it WRONG to pirate? I don’t personally think so (I’m subscribed to the piracy sub) but it’s certainly suspect, and at the end of the day we shouldn’t be spending too much time on luxuries anyway.

Has the government banned an educational book, or perhaps it simply isn’t sold in your region? I would have a hard time condemning that from any perspective, and I think the author of the book in most cases would encourage you to pirate, because they want you to have the knowledge within.

There was a book I was reading about personal internet privacy, and within, he mentioned that many people pirated earlier versions of the book. The author said basically “I can’t stop you from pirating the book. Maybe you can’t afford it. Maybe you don’t trust the value without seeing it first. Just know that I am considering not updating a new edition because I am getting less and less sales. If it ever becomes not worth it, then resources like this will not exist.”

At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. If you respect the work being done and want more of it, you should pay for it, if possible. If you want more things like that thing, you should pay for it. If you want to prevent further degeneration of art into lowest common denominator slop, you should pay for it.

There are times where pirating (or similar things like adblockers) may be more moral than not doing it. YouTube has a lot of important knowledge that should not be gate kept, but Google is a very immoral company, and so are companies that advertise heavily. Ad blocking is the moral thing, as well as the best from a privacy and security perspective, even the FBI recommends using them. So at the end of the day, it’s a complicated topic, but you should consider “what would Allah do in my situation?” If good people create something with their hard work, he would reward them. If it is avoiding association with bad people by pirating, or finding a way to bring knowledge and wisdom to the masses, maybe he’d pirate.

I dont think piracy is that bad, and I don’t have qualms about not giving money to mega corporations, especially for content that rarely makes them or the actual creators money years after release. But if you’re really worried about morality, the question should not be “is it THAT bad?”, it should be “what is the moral line of action in this situation?”

Do you think crime, hooliganism, or protesting doesn’t exist in Japan?

“Phone-y” I see you OP.

Oh there’s plenty of people out to get the average person. It’s just almost never the scapegoat that a political party selects.